


Softly in the Dark

by firefright



Series: Twins Together [1]
Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Minor Character Death, Threats of Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-16 16:21:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29827653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firefright/pseuds/firefright
Summary: In another world, Eva manages to find both twins in time and hide them together in the closet.
Relationships: Dante & Vergil (Devil May Cry)
Series: Twins Together [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2195571
Comments: 19
Kudos: 105





	Softly in the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> Hey folks! It's that time in my old fandom loop cycle where I have intense feels about the Sparda twins again (DMC trash since 2005, if you didn't know), and this time around I've actually worked up enough emotions to write some words of my own about them, in large part thanks to all the amazing fanworks others have made since DMC5 came out.
> 
> This fic in particular is inspired by this [lovely fanart](https://selemantra.tumblr.com/post/643142394126139392/hush-i-was-thinking-what-if) I saw on tumblr, so please consider going over there and giving the artist some love as well. They deserve it ♥

Dante’s heart is beating rabbit fast inside his chest. Vergil knows, because he can hear it, tucked up beside his where they cling together inside the closet their mother hid them in.

 _Stay here_ , she’d said at the time, voice barely a whisper, _I have to go get something. But I’ll be fine, I promise. You both need to be good boys. Be brave and quiet, like men, huh? Don’t come out again until you know it’s safe._

She’d been lying. Vergil had known it instantly, even if Dante didn’t. He’d seen it in the trembling expression on her face, the barely held back tears as she choked the words out. The final caresses she’d laid over their hair and faces. She didn’t have to get anything. Nothing that was worth her life anyway. But she did have to stop the demons rampaging through the house from sniffing out her sons. The two young hybrids, who don’t yet have the power to fight back the horde themselves.

Vergil had almost protested, not wanting her to leave. His mind full of thoughts of their father’s study. The locked trunk within that contains their promised inheritance: Yamato and Rebellion. But then his mother had levelled him with a look like she knew what he was thinking, and all the words died in his throat.

_You two have to look after each other. No matter what. Protect each other. So long as you’re together, you’ll be okay. Now stay there, don’t come out. No matter what you hear or see. Don’t come out. I’ll... I’ll be right back. You’ll see._

Then she’d shut the doors on them, cutting off their view of her through white wooden slats. But not enough that they couldn’t make out her shadow as she ran down the hallway, lit up the unearthly glow of the creatures tearing apart their house and burning it in their wake.

Not even a minute passed before they heard her scream. One long, high-pitched note of terror, then silence, before it was followed by the low rumble of distant growls. The monsters, pleased with themselves for what they’d done.

Vergil doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to forget that sound as long as he lives. Nor the useless anger he feels within himself for being too weak, too small and helpless, to save her.

Against his chest, Dante shakes harder. He hasn’t done much else since their mother left them, except cling to Vergil and whimper, trying not to sob. Vergil holds him tightly in turn, making no sound except to occasionally shush him, too fearful even now of what they can sense going on outside of their tiny refuge.

The crackling of flame, the acrid smell of smoke filling their lungs and threatening to choke them. To make them betray their location through involuntary coughing. 

If the fire actually does reach them, what should they do? Their mother hadn’t told them, but Vergil doesn’t think she’d want them to stay hidden to the point of being burned alive. Would it be better for them to take their chances and run, then? Could they actually outpace the demons, escaping to the cool safety of the woods beyond their home? Maybe then they could become like the Lost Boys in the stories he’s read, or the Swiss Family Robinson, surviving out amidst the wilderness with each other. Awaiting the day when it was finally safe to come back to civilisation.

(Only... Again Vergil thinks of the swords in their father’s study. The woven grip of Yamato’s hilt. The way she’d sang to him with a promise of power when Father had first shown them their inheritance, mere weeks before he left for the last time.

If only… if only…

But no, Mother had ordered them to stay.)

“Vergil,” Dante whispers.

“Shh!” Vergil hushes him automatically, and only afterwards registers what it is that broke Dante out of his frozen fear long enough to make him speak.

Footsteps. Heavy. Dragging. Not _human_.

As one, they somehow tighten their arms around each other even more. Whatever it is, it’s loping closer to them with a sharp scraping sound like claws over wood. _Don’t breathe_ , Vergil wants to tell his brother, but doesn’t dare. _Don’t breathe, or it’ll hear us_. Luckily, Dante seems to register the sentiment anyway. The same way he always manages to understand Vergil when it really matters, no matter how much they may fight otherwise. His chest goes still, alongside everything else, leaving only the rapid pitter-patter of their matching heartbeats.

Outside, the thing in the hallway draws level with the closet door.

 _Teeth_ , is the first thing Vergil registers. With the light coming into the closet through the slats, the most he can make out of the demon is its monstrous silhouette. The teeth, sharp and easily as long as his forearm. The jaws, almost crocodilian in shape, yet far bigger and warped. It breathes in a hissing rasp, as a long tongue like a snake’s scents the air, increasing Vergil’s fear tenfold.

Will it smell them? Taste them? For all his reading, Vergil’s mind is drawing a blank right now on the correct term for something that uses its tongue that way. He can only hope the smell of the smoke filling the hallway is stronger than anything he or Dante are putting out. Though the way it’s making his eyes water is also making his attempts to stay quiet all the harder. He wants to wipe them. Wants to hiss at the discomfort. But that would mean taking his arm away from his brother, as well as alerting the monster to their location, and Dante—

Outside the closet, the monster’s head suddenly swings in their direction, and every thought other than abject terror flies right out of Vergil’s head.

_No! No, no, no no nononono. Go away! We’re not here. We’re not!_

The only way he and Dante could possibly be any closer right now is if they were one person. Meaning he can feel every violent shake of his brother’s body as it ricochets into his own, followed by a sudden tug on his shirt as Dante bites down on it, like he knows it’s the only way he’ll be able to stay quiet as the thing approaches.

A smart decision. Vergil dearly wishes he could do the same.

It snuffles at the door, wet and odious. The steady drip of what might be saliva spatters the hardwood floor. Red eyes, like something out of a nightmare, glare hatefully at their hideaway, and though Vergil wants dearly to tear his gaze away and hide his face in his brother’s hair—as Dante has hidden his own against his chest—he can’t.

Instead he’s frozen, like a deer in headlights. Watching death approach him and helpless to avoid it.

Is… is that really it? Are they both really going to die here? Vergil’s never really considered death and what it means before tonight. At all of eight years old, he and his brother’s concerns up till now have always been far smaller. They’ve seen death, of course, in the animals in the woods outside their home. Even caused it before, in the way small children (even those without demonic blood flowing through their veins) often do, crushing bugs beneath their heels for the fun of it. But they’ve never thought of it coming for themselves or anyone they cared about, and now that Vergil is, he quickly realises it’s one of the most horrifying concepts he’s ever turned his mind to.

The end of everything. Him, his brother. No more sunny afternoons spent reading in his favourite nook in the library. No more sword fights out in the garden. No more eating or running or breathing or playing, or cuddling with their mother before bed. Just a great, looming black wall of nothingness in front of him, threatening to absorb everything in its path.

 _Go away!_ he thinks harder, bending his entire will to it more than he ever has done anything else in his entire life. _Leave us alone! Please, please, please_ …

If only Father was still here. If only their mother…

No, their mother is already gone. Wholly, completely gone. She’s not coming back, and he can’t wish for such things any more. No more than he can rightly expect Sparda to suddenly charge back into their lives and save them, either. It’s just him now. Him and Dante. The only thing they have left in the world is each other.

(And maybe that’s a little comforting, at least. To think that if they die here, at least they’re going to do it together.)

The doors rattle in their frame as the thing breathes against them, and against his will, Vergil hiccups softly in fear. The smallest sound. His chest is hurting too much to keep holding his breath any longer, even though he and Dante had discovered they can normally do it for at least five minutes at a time if they want to before, experimenting as always with just how far they can push their abilities. It’s like his lungs have shrunk and tightened; another piece of his body working against him in this moment, just like his mind.

 _Sorry, Dante_ , he thinks as the door rattles again. _Sorry. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t… I_ —

Vergil screws his eyes shut, waiting for the inevitable. Slow seconds of a small eternity that he expects to end in agonising pain. He waits and he waits. And he waits. Then waits some more. And then…

Something loud crashes outside. Vergil thinks it’s the doors of the closet at first, until he suddenly realises that the noise actually came from further away. A cautious flicker of hope lights up inside his chest as the demon hisses in response, then grows steadily stronger as he hears it take what sounds like first one step back from their hideout, then another.

A second crash, and this time the thing darts away in response. Vergil forces his eyes back open just in time to see the long whip-cord of its tail vanish out of his line of sight, and just like that, all the air seems to rush back into the world. Bitter and smoke-filled as it is.

“Is it… is it gone?” Dante whispers, finally releasing his teeth from Vergil’s shirt. “Are we safe now?”

“It’s gone,” Vergil affirms, after waiting another thirty seconds to be sure. He tries to keep his voice steady, for his brother, but it still sounds woefully faint to his ears. “I…” Another loud sound, like wood tearing and splintering, comes from the direction the demon went in. “We’re not safe.”

He’s not sure they’re ever going to be safe again.

“I want to go,” Dante says, then. “I want to find Mom. I want...”

Vergil shakes his head. Their mother is gone, he knows it, even if Dante is still in denial. “We can’t.”

“But—”

“We _can’t._ ” Vergil emphasises, a flash of irritation at his brother’s childishness rising up in him. As if he doesn’t want to do exactly the same. “Or we’ll die too.”

Dante blinks up at him, his pale blue eyes far too large and wet in his face. His lower lip trembles with barely choked back sobs, and all at once Vergil feels sorry for what he said. But not enough to take it back.

“We can’t,” he says again, softer this time. “Not until we know the demons are gone.” 

Or the fire reaches them first.

Dante blinks slowly, enough to make fresh tears track down the already stained pathways of his cheeks. Then without saying another word, he buries his head back in against Vergil’s chest and the amulet there. It makes Vergil’s heart twist painfully for a moment, enough to briefly knock it out of rhythm with his twin’s own, before it rabbits back to that same rapid beat.

He wishes he could say more. He wishes he could say better. He wishes he could, like their mother, promise Dante it will be okay. That they’ll be all right together. But he…

A strange whooping, like warped, cackling laughter, echoes up at them from the lower floors of the house. Both of them flinch from it, before Vergil finally gives into the urge and buries his own face in his twin’s hair.

One day, one day they’ll get the demons back for this. If they survive. One day…

But for now, all they can do is cling to each other, shaking in the dark.

*

The next morning, the grey light of dawn rises covers the smoking remains of what was once an idyllic manor house. Crumbling ashen walls instead of white, ivy-covered stone. A roof, broken and caved inwards. Glass shattered, earth churned up. The skeletal fingers of burnt infrastructure rising up from the ground.

Not much survives of what was. Not the picture of a happy family home. And certainly not any feeling of safety. But as Vergil and Dante walk hand in hand away from the house, he can’t help but feel the tug to return to even the ghost of that memory. This place, their home and it’s surrounding land, has been the only thing they’ve ever known, and the rest of the world beyond it looms as both a strange and foreign place. One they have no idea how to navigate, with only the clothes on their backs, the amulets around their necks and their father’s swords, newly liberated from what was left of his study, to their names.

But if there is one thing he and Dante are in agreement about after the nightmare of the previous night, it is that they cannot stay here. The sight of their mother’s body, found first amid the wreckage, had only been proof of that. And one neither twin is ever going to forget.

(Burnt and bloody. Golden hair twisted into a messy pile around her head. Her eyes glazed over and open. Her mouth forever frozen in a scream by the claws that ripped out her throat...)

Vergil’s fingers tighten against Dante’s for a moment, squeezing them. He is carrying Yamato, while Dante half-drags the larger form of Rebellion behind him in the wake of his listless steps. It will still be a good few years before they grow into either sword, but just having them in their hands now is a reassurance. A promise, that one day they will be strong enough.

Just so long as they stay together. Vergil squeezes his eyes tightly shut as their mother’s last words to them again flow through his mind, before he forces them back open once more.

They are together, him and Dante. No matter what else happens, they still have each other, and Vergil swears to himself he will never let that change. That he will never lose another person in his life or feel so powerless again as he did last night.

They still have each other. Swallowing hard, Vergil focuses on that and that alone as he leads Dante down the path and deeper into the woods.

**Author's Note:**

> [I'm on tumblr!](https://firefrightfic.tumblr.com/)
> 
> (also this story may or may not spiral into a larger AU series, I haven't decided yet. But I do have some words on the go for at least one more part.)


End file.
